searched. The officers are not, as far as circumstances will admit, to be separated from their men. The officers to be quartered according to their rank. All corps whatever of Lieutenant-general Burgoyne's army to be included in the above articles. All Canadians, and persons belonging to the Canadian establishment, and other followers of the army, to be permitted to return to Canada, to be conducted to the first British post on Lake George, and to be supplied with provisions as the other troops, and to be bound by the same condition of not serving during the present contest. Passports to be granted to three officers to carry despatches to Sir William Howe, Sir Guy Carleton, and to Great Britain. The officers to be admitted on their parole, and to be permitted to wear their side arms." By this convention 5,790 men surrendered prisoners. The sick and wounded left in camp, when the British retreated to Saratoga, together with the numbers of the British, German, and Canadian troops, who were killed, wounded, or taken, and who had deserted in the preceding part of the expedition, were reckoned to be 4,689. The whole royal force, exclusive of Indians, was probably about 10,000. The stores which the Americans acquired were very considerable. In a short time after the convention was signed, Gates moved forward to stop the devastations of the British on the North river; but on hearing of the fate of Burgoyne, Vaughan and Wallace retired to New York. About the same time the British, which had been left in the rear of the royal army, destroyed their cannon, and abandoning Ticonderoga, retreated to Canada.' On Burgoyne's return to England he frequently, but in vain, applied for a court-martial to investigate and pronounce upon his conduct at Saratoga; but the question of his surrender was brought in different shapes before parliament. On the day after Chatham had pronounced his eloquent reprobation of the system of employing the Indians as auxiliaries in the American struggle, the intelligence was received of Burgoyne's surrender. Chatham seized the crisis to move "that an address be presented to his majesty, to cause the proper officers to lay before the house copies of all orders and instructions to General Burgoyne, relative to the late expedition from Canada." Holding up a paper in view of the house, his lordship said that he had the king's speech in his hand, and a deep sense of the public calamity in his heart. That speech, he said, contained a most unfaithful picture of the state of public affairs; it had a specious outside, was full of hopes, while every thing within was full of danger. A system destructive of all faith and confidence had been introduced, his lordship affirmed, within the last fifteen years at St James's, by which pliable men, not capable men, had been raised to the highest posts of government. A few obscure persons had obtained an ascendancy where no man should have a personal ascendancy, and by the most insidious means the nation had been betrayed into a war of which they now reaped the bitter fruits. The spirit of delusion, his lordship said, had gone forth; ministers had imposed on the people; parliament had been induced to sanctify the imposition; a visionary phantom of revenue had been conjured up for the basest of purposes, but it was now for ever vanished. His lordship said, that the abilities of General Burgoyne were confessed, his Abridged from Miller's History. personal bravery not surpassed, his zeal in the service unquestionable. He had experienced no pestilence, nor suffered any of the accidents which sometimes supersede the wisest and most spirited exertions of human industry. What then is the cause of his misfortune?-Want of wisdom in our councils, want of ability in our ministers. His lordship said, the plan of penetrating into the colonies from Canada was a most wild, uncombined, and mad project; and the mode of carrying on the war was the most bloody, barbarous, and ferocious, recorded in the annals of history. The arms of Britain had been sullied and tarnished by blending the scalping-knife and tomahawk with the sword and firelock. Such a mode of warfare was a contamination which all the waters of the Hudson and the Delaware would never wash away. It was impossible for America to forget or forgive so horrid an injury. General Burgoyne was for some time in disgrace at court, particularly after his refusal to return to America in 1779; but he was ultimately restored to his rank in the army, and appointed head of the army in Ireland. He died in 1792. He was a man of considerable literary talent, and wrote some pieces for the stage. William Murray, Earl of Mansfield. BORN A. D. 1705.-DIED A. D. 1793. 66 WILLIAM MURRAY, first earl of Mansfield, was the fourth son of David, earl of Stormont,' by Margery, daughter of Scot of Scotstarvet. He was born on the 2d of March, 1705, at Perth in Scotland. His residence in Scotland, however, was but of short duration, he having been brought to London at the age of three years. He was first sent to Westminster school. At the age of fourteen he was admitted of that seminary as king's scholar. During the time of his being at school," says one who was contemporary with him, "he gave early proofs of his uncommon abilities, not so much in his poetry as in his other exercises, and particularly in his declamations, which were sure tokens and prognostics of that eloquence which grew up to such maturity and perfection at the bar, and in both houses of parliament." At the election in May, 1723, he stood first on the Oxford exhibition list. He was entered of Christ's church in June that year. In the year 1727 he had taken the degree of B. A., and on the death of George I. was among those of the university who composed verses on that event. On the 26th of June, 1730, he took the degree of M. A., and probably soon afterwards left the university. Before he devoted himself In the memorial printed in The Secret History of Colonel Hooke's Negotiations in Scotland in favour of the Pretender, in 1707,' 8vo. 1760, this nobleman is thus described :-" Lord Stormont is turned of forty, and he is of the house of Murray. He is rich and powerful on the frontiers of England, and in the middle of Scotland. He is a man of great resolution, strict probity, and uncommon presence of mind." appears also from the same memorial, that he had considerable weight with the maicontents in his native kingdom. It The registry of his admission into Christ's college places his birth at Bath. Sir William Blackstone once mentioned this circumstance to Lord Mansfield, who said the mistake perhaps originated from the broad pronunciation of the person who gave in his name to the registrar. to business, he made the tour of Europe. On his return he became a member of the society of Lincoln's inn, and was in due time called to the bar. The fortune of our young lawyer at this period was rather slender; but he soon supplied any deficiency in that respect by his application and abilities. He does not appear to have proceeded in his profession in the way then usually adopted of labouring in the chambers of a special pleader, but started at once into practice at the bar, and very early acquired the notice of the chancellor and the judges, as well as the confidence of the inferior practitioners. The graces of his elocution, however, hurt him with a certain class of stupid people who would not believe that such bright talents could associate with the more solid attainments of the law, or that a man of genius and vivacity could be a profound lawyer. Pope, in allusion to this silly prejudice, writes: "The Temple late two brother-sergeants saw, Who deem'd each other oracles of law; With equal talents these congenial souls, One lull'd the Exchequer, and one stunn'd the Rolls; And shook his head at Murray as a wit." It is remarkable that this prejudice accompanied Lord Mansfield to the end of his judicial life, in spite of the daily proofs he gave in the court of king's bench and in the house of lords, of his profound knowledge of the abstrusest points of jurisprudence. Even Lord Chesterfield seems to have fallen into this unfounded opinion. In a letter to his son, dated February 12th, 1754, he says: "The present solicitor-general, Murray, has less law than many lawyers; but he has more practice than any, merely upon account of his eloquence, of which he has a never-failing stream." The friendship which subsisted between Pope and our young lawyer also fostered this notion. That great poet entertained a particular affection for Murray, and was ever eager to show him marks of his regard. Bishop Warburton says, "Mr Pope had all the warmth of affection for this great lawyer, and indeed no man ever more deserved to have a poet for his friend. In the obtaining of which as neither vanity, party, nor fear had a share, so he supported his title to it by all the offices of a generous and true friendship." Ruffhead also declares that Pope had at one time an intention of leaving his house at Twickenham to his friend Murray, whose growing fame and rising station-which would render him superior to such a mansion-alone prevented him from carrying it into execution. In the fourth book of The Dunciad,' Pope says, speaking of those whose poetical pursuits were diverted by law or politics: "How sweet an Ovid, Murray, was our boast! How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!" And in his imitation of the first ode of the fourth book of Horace, he compliments him in the following lines addressed to Venus: "To number five direct your doves, These spread round Murray all your blooming loves. The number of Lord Mansfield's chambers in Lincoln's inn. Noble and young, he strikes the heart: With every sprightly, every decent part,- Shall stretch thy conquests over half thy kind. Make but his riches equal to his wit; Then shall thy form the marble grace (Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend her face. Sacred to social life and social love, Shall glitter o'er the pendent green, Where Thames reflects the visionary scene; Shall call the smiling Loves and young Desires; Whatever propensities, however, Lord Mansfield might have towards polite literature, he did not permit them to divert his attention from his profession. In the year 1736, the murder of Captain Porteus by a mob in Edinburgh, occasioned a bill of pains and penalties to be brought into parliament against the lord-provost and the city, which, after various modifications, and a firm and unabated opposition in every stage of its progress, passed into a law. In both houses Murray was employed by the city, and acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of his clients, that some time after he was presented with the freedom of Edinburgh in a gold box. In 1737 an opportunity presented itself, to which, in after life, he always recurred with pleasure, and from which period he dated his success. In the celebrated cause of Theophilus Cibber and Sloper, the leading counsel for the defendant was seized in court with sudden illness, and the conduct of the defence devolved upon Murray, the junior counsel, who managed it in so masterly a manner that the jury gave only £10 damages. The action being for criminal intercourse with the plaintiff's wife, it involved no abstruse points of law, and therefore was better fitted for the display of oratorical than legal ability. Business now poured in upon him on all sides; and, from a few hundreds a-year, he found himself, in every subsequent year, in possession of thousands. On the 20th of November, 1733, he married Lady Elizabeth Finch, daughter of Daniel, sixth earl of Winchelsea; and in the month of November, 1742, was appointed solicitor-general, in the place of Sir John Strange, resigned. He likewise was chosen to represent the town of ⚫ On this occasion a doggrel poem was published by one Morgan, a person then at the bar, entitled The Causidicade,' in which all the principal lawyers were supposed to urge their respective claims to the post. At the conclusion it is said "Then Murray, prepared with a fine panegyric In praise of himself, would have spoke it like Garrick ; But the president stopping him, said, 'As in truth Your worth and your praise is in every one's mouth, The office, by merit, is yours, all must own; Boroughbridge in parliament, for which place he was also returned in 1747 and 1754. In the month of March, 1746-7, he was appointed one of the managers for the impeachment of Lord Lovat. It fell to his lot to observe on the evidence previous to the lords giving their judgment. This task be executed with so much candour, moderation, and gentlemanly feeling that Lord Talbot, at the conclusion of his speech, paid him the following compliment: “The abilities of the learned manager who just now spoke never appeared with greater splendour than at this very hour, when his candour and humanity have been joined to those great abilities which have already made him so conspicuous that I hope one day to see him add lustre to the dignity of the first civil employment in this nation." Lord Lovat himself also bore testimony to the abilities of his adversary: “I thought myself," says his lordship, "very much loaded by one Murray,' who, your lordships know, was the bitterest evidence there was against me: I have suffered by another Murray, who, I must say with pleasure, is an honour to his country, and whose eloquence and learning is much beyond what is to be expressed by an ignorant man like me. I heard him with pleasure, though it was against me. I have the honour to be his relation, though perhaps he neither knows that nor values it. I wish that his being born in the north may not hinder him from the preferment that his merit and learning deserve." During the time Murray continued in office, he supported, with great ability, the administration with which he was connected; and rendered himself proportionally obnoxious to those who were in opposition. The principles of his family-in which we may presume him to have been educated-have been already noticed; and therefore it will create no surprise, that, in the confidence of friendly intercourse, or in a moment of exhilaration, he should have uttered sentiments which youth and inexperience only could palliate. In the year 1753 he got involved in a charge, which we shall relate in the words of Lord Melcombe. "Messrs Fossett (Fawcett), Murray, and Stone, were much acquainted, if not school-fellows in early life. Their fortune led them different ways: Fawcett's was to be a country-lawyer and recorder of Newcastle. Johnson, now bishop of Gloucester, was one of their associates. On the day the king's birth-day was kept they dined at the dean of Durham's, at Durham; this Fawcett, Lord Ravensworth, Major Davison, and one or two more,-who retired after dinner into another room. The conversation turning upon the late bishop of Gloucester's preferments, it was asked who was to have his prebend of Durham: the dean said, that the last news from London was that Dr Johnson was to have it. Fawcett said he was glad that Johnson got off so well, for he remembered him a Jacobite several years ago, and that he used to be with a relation of his who was very disaffected, one Vernon, a mercer, where the Pretender's health was frequently drunk. This passing among a few familiar acquaintance was thought no more of at the time: it spread, however, so much in the North-how I never heard accounted forand reached town in such a manner, that Mr Pelham thought it necessary to desire Mr Vane, who was a friend to Fawcett, and who employed him in his business, to write to Fawcett to know if he had said this of 5 One of the evidences against him. |